Kendrick Struggles in Loss to Nats

Kyle Kendrick struggled for the second straight outing on Friday night, and the Phillies dropped the first of their three game series with the Nationals, 5-2. Kendrick and the defense had a very tough time in the fifth inning, giving up four runs in that frame alone. The inning started off with a Bryce Harper single, and the scoring began with an RBI triple by Adam Laroche, followed by an RBI single by Kurt Suzuki, and a 2 RBI double by Steve Lombardozzi. The Phillies runs came from an RBI single by Domonic Brown and a sac fly by Erik Kratz.

STRUGGLING KENDRICK

Kendrick’s line was 5 IP, 8 H, 5 R, 4BB, 1 K. That’s two straight starts where he gave up at least four runs, bringing his era up to 3.29. His defense didn’t do him any favors tonight, but he did struggle with his command, and didn’t miss many bats. This isn’t a good sign for the Phillies, because Kendrick has been arguably their best pitcher so far this year, and two straight poor starts might be a sign of regression. Hopefully he can snap out of it.

FREE SWINGERS

The Phillies walked zero times Friday night. None. Zip. Zilch. Nada. They only collected six hits, and grounded out 15 times, including two GIDP’s–one that absolutely killed a rally in a promising fifth inning. The only Phillie with multiple hits was Domonic Brown.

THE RETURN OF STUTES

Michael Stutes got his first in-game MLB action since April of 2012. He threw two scoreless innings while striking out two batters. He threw 16 strikes in 21 pitches. It was very good to see him back out there again.

They came into tonights game only one game behind the Nats and this is the kind of show you get.

Revere has no value. None.

What more do we have to see?
Worley will never be more than a 4 or a 5 so just release Revere. This team can finish 5 games under .500 with or without him.

The problems with this team run much further and to the core of the orginazation than bringing up Michael Martinez.

The problem is your foundation. Your general manager and manager.
The over paid players that have been here for far too long.

Michael Young shouldn’t be hitting anywhere near the middle of any line up that wants to contend at this point.
But he will. And he will continue too.

Martinez is moot.

Rome is burning or has burned down and they call up the worst fire fighter in the world ( Martinez).

So what?

Ruben Minaya ( amaro) started throwing gasoline and kindling on the fire 3 years ago.
He continues to do so.

I don’t give 2 craps about mini mart. If anything he is one of more liked players the last few years.

He is the least of our problems.

The team needs to start dealing with the real issues.

But that’s tough and painful and the team ( and the fans?) seem to want to put it off forever. The longer you put it off the harder the medicine is to swallow.

For the record I am glad to see Galvis in for Utley and would wupport any young player filling in for any of the fossils.

Love Utley but any change for the younger is a positive. Should have been addressed a long time ago too. Like not resigning Rollins.

Phils could have been sub .500 without him in 2012 and 2013. Instead they will be with him. With no future.

At no point this year will I ever see the Phillies ahead of the Nats. Would have been nice to win today though and tie them. But there was no effort. When it was 5-2 at no point was a comeback coming. Youd need to not be lifeless for that.

Welcome back. I agree and I disagree. Of course you are right that, in the big picture, the decision to promote Mini Mart instead of Pete Orr or Josh Fields is relatively minimal when compared to decisions like the Howard extension or even the Chad Durbin signing. However, the entire Mini Mart affair is symptomatic of larger problems that the GM has created by his overall mis-management of this organization. When you’re core talent is good enough, you can win a lot of games (and even a World Championship) with bad players at the margins. After all, Eric Bruntlett (2008’s version of Mini Mart) and Adam Eaton have World Series rings. However, as the GM has held onto the core and the players have aged and declined, the moves at the margin become more and more important. Moves like trading for Ty Wigginton, signing Laynce Nix to a 2 year deal, giving away Nate Schierholtz and signing the Chads (Qualls and Durbin) among others can be the difference between winning and losing 1 game out of every 20 (~8 games during the season) and those games can be the difference between the 2nd Wild Card and missing the playoffs.

It was surprising that they took a 28 year old utility with a career MiLB OPS < .700 in the Rule V draft. It was even more surprising that they compounded the mistake by giving him 356 MLB PA's during 2011 and 2012. It is shocking that they didn't outright release him after he posted a .512 OPS in those PA's. The sad thing is that I expected them to call him up to replace Utley.

Being as your disapproval of Amaro is becoming less disagreed with every day, to the extent that you are philosophy savvy on an organization as a whole, what qualities in multiple areas would you like to see employed next? Don’t overweight me with a metric approach, because I already know that, and to at least an extent would agree.

Or maybe you have a name, if you wanna give reasons for that candidate.

I just don’t see where this is working out adequately. I don’t know when you make the change, but the money left on the contract becomes less of a factor all the time/

This isn’t Martinez driven, by the way, although that might be accurately described as a final straw.

Have fun with the ? if you choose to address it. The time for ripping Rube is past. Let’s look ahead and see what the thinking is.

I don’t know enough about the candidates to give you a name. What I will say is that, if I was hiring a GM, I’d look for one who recognizes the importance of the draft and of having a strong farm system and who would rarely, if ever, sign a free agent who would cost the team its 1st round draft pick. While I enjoy advancing my personal knowledge of sabremetrics, I would actually prefer a GM who relies heavily on his scouts, but who also is open-minded enough to supplement the scouting reports with advanced analytical thinking. The GM who I think is the best in the business is Jon Daniels, so maybe someone below Daniels in the Texas front office would be a good hire.

Thanks for the comment, hk. To me, hiring a GM is no small task because it’s a tough, tough job itself, and so few do it well, let alone for successfully deciding who’s right for the task So I don’t know WHO would be qualified for that endeavor, and I mean no offense when I add let alone Dave Montgomery.

The idea of an AGM from good stock sounds good. I think highly of Jon Daniels as well, I admit to sometimes wondering if he might not have some edge over others with the help he gets from Ryan above, but a large part of the job seems surrounding yourself with talented support, and how you work with them. I don’t believe I have much knowledge of how Ruben would grade there, but one incident that I might remember inaccurately was Chuck LaMar leaving seemingly to hushed tones.

For the same reason you like I believe it’s Thaddeus Young who I think is Daniels assistant, I’d be perked to look at top assistant’s from the Cards, Giants and Reds. Mozeliak, Sabean and Jocketty appear good people to have learned from. Would any of those 3 even be interested in the gig? Seems a little iffy, but Montgomery bringing in a young outsider doesn’t seem exactly Phillieish. Any of those 3 routes cary League familiarity which I doubt hurts, though might be a very small factor.

I do wonder how they’d feel about eating what’s now 8 mil plus on Rube’s deal. I’ve never been one to disregard large chunks of change as easy come easy go despite that it happens in sports frequently.

I wholeheartedly agree that hiring a new GM is a huge under-taking. I also recognize that there’s no guarantee that an AGM who apprenticed under a great GM will himself (or herself) become a great GM if given the opportunity. However, with this season looking like another disappointment – in large part because of decisions that RAJ made – I fear ownership allowing RAJ to make the deadline moves, especially when I hear him talk of being a buyer. I often wonder how much GM’s who think their jobs are on the line make moves with their best interests at heart instead of those of the team. While I hope the team turns things around and legitimately has a shot at the playoffs come late July, if their chances seem like a long shot, I hope ownership prevents RAJ from being a buyer (assuming he is still the GM at the time).

If you go back to when Doc was traded by TorontoI can only speak for myself, but I assumed Riccardi was in full charge still, and the deal just didn’t get done. After JP was gone, I can’t remember the source, so I can’t speak to the reliability, but the word put out was that DFoc didn’t get dealt because the Jays had already ,ade up their minds on Riccardi, and weren’t allowing him to trade Halladay.

“I have 0 problem with recalling Mike Martinez or starting him at any postion including first base on a daily basis. It wont hurt or help much regardless.”

oooooooeeeeee.

When one defends somebody, or something, it’s well advised not to get carried away forgetting the replacement’s possibilities.

Like when people bombard Revere, I see he got one defense calling him an above average defender. If you think Howard is inadequate in certain situations, that’s fine, but let’s not overstate Mini’s possibilities of playing in his stead, and it not making much difference. My luck, having said that, Mini wouldhave a good game, but generally speaking, it’s entirely true.

Same with Ben. I believe it was Beta defending the guy a little bit. That’s somewhat acceptable, but let’s not get carried away by calling him an above verage defender to falsely increase his standing. The only thing he does well is range, and if that offsets his arm and routes to bottom line at above average, it’s something different than I’m seeing.

how do you validate stating you support any young player over a fossil and they say you support martinnez pklaying over anybody? martinez is not young and has no business being on a aa roster, let alone a mlb roster.
the issue everyone posts about is not “michael martinez” himself, its the lame excuse the gm and team gives. yes, he is versatile, but he is in a worse slump than orr/ruf/take your pick!
ben revere is a nightmare in every sense of the game. sure, he will make a highlight catch, but he has alot of trouble with the basics of the game. over sliding bases, misjudging fly balls, etc. i know last night was a difficult ball to track going back to the fence, but he looked flat out silly! someone should have hit pinch hit for revere in the 5th with bases loaded!
i agree that the gm has failed and we can only hope that he is removed before he sends off anyone of value to a contender and gets $.50 on the dollar!

Oh how did not miss you AFW. This site does so much better without you. M Young his hitting .280 hardly awful and that is with a 3 game slump. You want to dis his defense that is fine. Revere is having a pretty good month and has shown some improvement with the bat and an above average fielder. Please stay away for a long time again because you very much ruin the constructive critism most fans write in here

While I don’t like revere, I think you need to keep him going forward. He can provide defensive value and is young and cheap. If we’re serious about rebuilding (and it’s fairly evident we need to be) you are going to have to let some young cheap players play.

As for tonight’s game, it seemed both pitcher’s weren’t sharp. It was a cool night and KK was obv struggling with his grip. He was blowing on his hands all night long. I have a degree in meteorology and have been studying this. I’m working on some conclusions but the base numbers right now show that the Phillies are something like a .300 ballclub the last few years when the game time temps are in the low 60s or below. Also, they are like a .400 ballclub when the prevailing winds are north or northwest. This makes sense. Stadiums are by and large oriented so that home-plate faces northeast (MLB rules recommend). In cooler spring weather patterns winds blow from the N/W or North. That’s “in.” As a flyball hitting team that was allegedly built for the homer (well aside from the excessive GIDP part) winds blowing in really hurts the Phillies.
So when I see its going to be cool and windy, I just assume the Phillies will have trouble scoring runs and lose the game. It’s been a fairly cool spring.

Andrew unfortunately is dead on about Michael ‘meaningless 2 out single’ Young. He has 10 RBI. TEN. For comparison’s Brown, Utley , and Howard all have 25 . Isn’t scoring a lot of runs either. To top it off he leads the league in GDP’s .Just a very unproductive hitter to have in the middle.

Look at the OBP of the guys hitting in front of him and you’ll have your answer as to why he only has 10 RBIs. RBI is the stupidest stat to point to when assessing a player’s value. I can’t defend him grounding into double plays, but the rate at which he has hit into them has dropped from earlier this season. 9 through May 3, and only 1 since then.

While I agree with you that RBI should not be used to measure an individual’s contributions, your comment about Young not having men on base is not particularly correct. Young is one of 117 men who have batted with 100 or more men on base this season and of those 117, he is tied with 2 others for the 3rd least number of RBI. There’s also a stat that baseballmusings.com tracks, called RBI%, which is 100*(RBI-HR)/Runners On, and Young is ranked 106th out of the 117 hitters who have batted with 100 runners on base. Young’s problem is that his power has declined so significantly over the past few years that he’s basically become a better hitting version of Placido Polanco, but without the good glove. While he has hit well with runners on base this, most of his hits in those situations have been singles. If he continues to draw walks, he should be batting lead-off.

This team may struggle big time without Utley. Unless Howard, Brown and Delmon can carry the load they could well struggle.

Michael Young is playing a very shallow game right now, he needs to pick it up big time, but he will never carry the load IMO, just not that type of player anymore if he ever was. Just like Pence and Victorino and Werth, you count on M. Young as a good complimentary player, not a big piece. But right now he’s scuffling and can’t stand in even those players shoes.

Ben Revere, he has some promise, but right now, he’s doesn’t look like a contributor to a contending major league team to me. Maybe that will change, I don’t know. If he can’t hit well, but could be counted on to hold runners to doubles instead of trying to make Web Gems every night and allowing triples, maybe I could live with his slap hitting style. But he doesn’t. BTW I don’t blame him for not making that play last night, the wind was brutal on all the outfielders, but again, he could have played it safe, off the wall, hit the cutoff and kept Laroche (not known as a speed demon) to a double. Then maybe he doesn’t score on Suzuki’s single, and who knows, the sequence events may have been changed completely. Of course once a week or so he’s going to make one of those catches and everyone is going to say how great he is. Meanwhile how many runs have scored every time he doesn’t play it safe.

And of course, flip the page and look at the Orioles today. 3 more runs in the top of the first, 2 with 2 outs.
How is it done? Hunger
(Ok, a monster like Chris Davis at first base, Manny Machado at 3rd, Brown in the OF – all hitting in excess of .300)
And yet, the Orioles are throwing trash in Freddy Garcia pitching..

While yes I don’t generaly come on to praise the good things.
the Phillies broadcast and the media and this site tend to handle praising a losing team very well.

I do tend to make valid criticism.

Revere hitting into that DP when I sit here and say to myself.
He cant.
He is too fast.
Its virtually impossible.
And then he does it.
It was the play of the game and the momentum changer.

Don’t know what can be dont with him. I cant ever see a time in my life when he is a capable lead off man or contributor to the Phillies.
So he will fly off my radar.
I wont be ripping the likes of him or Mini mart often.
Or KK or Jamie Moyer or anyone else who is what they should be.

Its the guys who are supposed to be doing things and aren’t that get my attention.